


Hope is Not a Course of Action

by thatdamneddame



Category: Marvel Avengers Movies Universe, The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Backstory, F/M, Get Together, M/M, brief depiction of torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-07
Updated: 2012-04-07
Packaged: 2017-11-03 06:07:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,572
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/378155
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thatdamneddame/pseuds/thatdamneddame
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clint loved Natasha like he loved a lot of stupid ideas.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hope is Not a Course of Action

**Author's Note:**

> This is a mash up of comic and movie 'verse cannons. Apparently I have a lot of Clint feelings. Who knew?
> 
> Thanks to prettyasadiagram for the beta and for putting up with all of my feelings, and thanks to my non-fandom friend who doesn't understanding what the hell I'm doing but tries to be supportive anyways.
> 
> warning: brief, non-graphic, depiction of torture
> 
> eta: now with fewer typos. Seriously, I've got to stop editing this shit at one a.m.

_forgiveness is the release of all hope for a better past._

            -Buddy Wakefield

 

 

Clint loved Natasha like he loved a lot of stupid ideas. She was hard and fast and dangerous and looked at Clint like he was a weapon not a carnie. She had hair the color of blood and only smiled when she didn’t mean it and lived like a house on fire and Clint felt alive just being in her orbit. Natasha taught him how to knife fight, how to find a man’s weaknesses, how to swear in Russian, French, Italian. She taught him that who you were and how the world saw you were two different things. That it was better that way.

At night, in cheap motels and the backseat of cars, Clint dreamed about the Swordsman. About Trick Shot. About his father. About Barney. About all the people he had loved over the years, all the people who had betrayed him, hurt him. Everyone who had tried to kill him.

In the daylight, and under street lamps, and in the light of those cheap motels, Natasha looked like something different. Like something new. Like someone better. But in the light of cop cars and searchlights and the buzzing fluorescent lights of an interrogation room, Natasha looked a lot like the same old story.

 

 

SHIELD Agent Phil Coulson wore suits and patent leather loafers and he had a receding hairline and the smile of a man who thought that fantasy football was a fulfilling hobby. Clint smiled the way Natasha taught him: sharp and bright and, on him, a bit feral at the edges, his teeth smeared with the blood of a rough arrest.

Phil Coulson was not cowed. Phil Coulson smiled back.

“I’d ask you where you learned to shoot like that,” Coulson says, voice as bland as his smile, “But Romanoff always wrote exemplary field reports.” Clint tells him to go fuck himself and Coulson just laughs, “We have a few options for you now, Mr. Barton. Option A, we can put you through a sort of rehabilitation program, if you will. Finish training you up properly and then put you in the field for us. Or, B, we can put you in such a high security prison it’ll be as if you never existed. Or,” and Phil Coulson smiles at this, smiles like he’s just heard a joke at a dinner party, “or we can use you as bait.”

 

 

Clint chooses option A. They use him as bait anyways.

 

 

“I thought I said A.” Clint says, covered in the blood of the man who had made him the marksman he is today, “If you’re not actually going to listen, don’t give me a choice.”

Coulson hands him a towel, “Not my call, Barton. But there’s nothing quite like a trial by fire.”

Clint grins, the cocksure confidence that got him into bar fights and into Natasha’s pants, “And how’d I do?”

Coulson taps twice above his left eyebrow and looks disappointed, “An inch to the right next time and we’ll keep you.”

Clint thinks he did pretty fucking good considering the last time he'd shot a rifle he was twelve, firing a bb gun at tin cans, his brother helping him, young enough to still be on Clint's side. "Get me a real fucking weapon and maybe I could shoot straight."

Coulson smiles that same bland smile and says, "We'll see."

 

 

SHIELD puts Clint up in a windowless box at HQ and gives him a pittance as a per diem, not that he can use it. He’s confined to quarters unless he’s accompanied by an authorized agent, and even then they only let him go to the cafeteria or the gym or the range. It’s basically house arrest.

They teach him how to field strip a gun and they buy him new clothes that he doesn’t wear and they put him in rooms with psychiatrists who spend fruitless hours trying to make him talk about his parents, about the circus, about Natasha.

Clint doesn’t know where Natasha is. He knows she set him up and let SHIELD find him, put him in this daycare program for potentially useful but definitely violent adults. He knows the idea of her clings to him like a ghost, and that it makes the SHIELD agents nervous. They remind Clint of the horses he spent time around as a kid: put ‘em on the job and they’re as steadfast as anything, but when the show’s over, they’re jumping at shadows.

Clint’s okay with that. He likes shadows. He can work with shadows. He just wishes he knew what the hell Natasha was thinking.

 

 

Phil Coulson finds Clint in the cafeteria. Coulson’s wearing a tailored suit and eating a hot dog smothered in sauerkraut and all of the Junior Agents give him a wide berth and looks of awe.

“I hear you’ve been giving the shrinks the silent treatment,” he says instead of _hello_ like a normal person.

“Have you come to punish me by breathing sauerkraut all over me?” Clint asks because he kind of thinks that Phil Coulson is an asshole.

Coulson ignores him, “I don’t care about the shrinks, but do you think if I dig up some medieval weaponry you can manage to shoot straight this time?”

Phil Coulson is the only person who thinks that a single, clean kill shot to the head is a misfire. Phil Coulson is an asshole. Clint sort of likes him.

 

 

Coulson gets him a brand new recurve bow and some grips and gear and takes him to Beirut to sit on a roof for fifteen hours in the fucking sun. Bow in hand, and Clint remembers this feeling from the circus: the feeling of the bow in his hands, the steadying of his breathing, the way he focuses in on the target, the rest of the world an insignificant blur.

Except this time, when Clint makes the shot, sweat is dripping into his eyes, arms burnt from the sun, he has an opening most snipers would consider _not enough time_ , and instead of applause, all he has is a bored suit telling him, “Bring it in, Barton. You’re done,” like assassinating people with bows and arrows is a normal thing to do.

 

 

Even in the desert, Coulson wears a suit and tie and patent leather loafers. He takes the bow from Clint and says, “Better. Looks like we’ll keep you.”

And Clint, feeling exposed without a weapon, says, “Gee, thanks. I’ve always wanted to be someone’s pet felon.”

Coulson just says, “It’s important to reach for the stars.”

 

 

Clint gets called out a few more times to kill some people, but nothing changes at SHIELD. Clint’s still on a leash and everyone asks probing questions about his past and everyone seems scared of Natasha, who isn’t even there, and Phil Coulson only ever comes around he wants someone dead. Which, you know, sort of works for Clint.

Five, six, seven, ten assassinations and it is always Coulson in Clint’s ear, in the hangar, handing him redesigned bows and taking them away in the end. Finally one day Clint says, “You gonna let me keep a decent bow on hand to practice with, or do you really think what they have at the range is good enough?”

Coulson puts Clint’s bow in a case and locks it, tucks the key into his inside jacket pocket, “Higher-ups want to see if they can wean you off this and onto rifles.” He says like it’s a funny idea, like you hand Clint a rifle and he’ll just end up shooting himself in the foot.

“If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” Clint says to Coulson, because the guy’s got a stick up his ass, but he’s alright, and then he says, for the higher-ups, “I’m not some fucking indentured servant.”

“There’s a fear that you’re working with Natasha. That you let yourself get caught.” Coulson says, and it’s the first time since he was kidnapped by a secret government agency that any one's said anything remotely sounding like the truth. And Clint laughs at that, because that is fucking _hilarious_. Natasha let him stick around, sure; let him fuck her and buy them guns and liquor, but she never included him in any of her plans.

Coulson gives him that same inscrutable smile, eyes hidden behind mirrored sunglasses, “That’s exactly what I said.”

 

 

Somehow, Natasha manages to shove a letter under Clint’s door. _Trust no one_ , it says, like Clint’s in some bad spy film and he has to find the mole. Like SHIELD means anything more to Clint than the people keeping him out of jail when he was found red-handed in the Department of Defense doing some shady shit with their top secret files on Russia.

Despite it all, part of Clint still trusts Natasha. She looked at him like he was a weapon and then she made him into one. The people here look at him like he’s a time bomb and treat him with kid gloves, hoping that if they don’t touch him, he won’t explode.

Clint shows the letter to Coulson. Coulson doesn’t look at him like anything at all.

 

 

Coulson doesn’t do anything with the letter, because he is, Clint suspects, a robot. He just says, “I was expecting as much,” and tucks it away like he does with his sunglasses and car keys and the keys to Clint’s bow, face bland and Clint can’t even tell if that’s a cover or if the guy really just doesn’t give a fuck. “How do you feel about teamwork?” Coulson asks instead, clearly not going to talk about it, so Clint isn’t going to either. Clint sits on roofs for hours at a time; he knows how to wait for an opening.

Besides, he’s done his part. He got screwed over by Natasha and entered into this work release program bullshit with the world’s most uncompromising suit and he’s fucking over it. So Clint just smiles, a bit mad, a bit deadly serious, and says, “Depends on the team.”

 

 

At first they keep him solely on sniper detail, back up for when the field agents aren’t enough. After a while he turns into their wild card, the agents not knowing anything about him except they he’ll be there when they need it, come hell or high water.

Clint has a problem with authority. Doesn’t trust those with power unless they prove it, unless they show Clint why exactly he’s supposed to be bending at the knee and kissing their asses. But he likes the field agents well enough, figures that they’re there through some form of the same bureaucratic bullshit that put Clint here as well. He figures that they’re asking Clint for cover because they don’t want to die—they have wives and children and TiVo’d hours of _Newlyweds: Nick and Jessica_ to look forward to, same as how Clint’s only living for when Coulson brings him a proper burger and fries from the outside.

These guys aren’t the authority, they’re just men and women looking to make it through the day. So Clint pays attention and fires each arrow with all the control and conviction he has, because he grew up in the goddamn circus, and he knows that you play the hand you got dealt and do your best to get through the day.

 

 

After a while, SHIELD starts to treat Clint a bit better, less like a convict and more like a teammate. They get rid of his escorts and give him unrestricted access to the commissary and the range. They even give him a proper fucking bow to practice with, and Clint spends his spare time getting to know the guys down on the range and making bets on increasingly ridiculous shots.

One day, someone calls him Trick Shot after one particularly inspired shot and Clint manages not to punch the guy in the face. Clint considers it character growth.

 

 

(No one ever calls him Trick Shot again. Clint thinks he hears people call him Hawkeye in the halls though.)

 

 

It’s supposed to be a prisoner transfer, basic, but it goes south quickly. Suddenly there are guys dressed like space Nazis or something storming the compound and Clint can’t draw fast enough to get them all and he’s stuck in the fucking rafters so he can’t even take out his frustration with his fists, the way Natasha taught him how.

When it’s all over, the prisoner has been taken and twelve good agents are dead and Phil Fucking Coulson is standing in the middle of the warehouse floor wearing that designer fucking suit, flecked with the blood of men he’s killed, shirt and hands stained with the blood of the teammates he couldn’t save. “Bring it in, Barton.” Coulson says into his earpiece, and for the first time since Clint met him, he sounds tired.

 

 

“What the hell was that?” asks Clint asks on the car ride back to base. Clint’s been working for SHIELD long enough to know that they run a tight ship. Long enough to know that that shouldn’t have happened. And Clint wants answers because Dunhill and Moye were good people, and now they’re dead, and they owed Clint fifty bucks each and now he’s going to have to find someone new to sneak him liquor on base.

Coulson’s wearing those mirrored sunglasses of his and his lips are pressed together and he hasn’t changed out of his shirt yet, blood sticking to his skin, “Above your security clearance,” he says in that clipped, official tone he uses when Clint won’t stick to radio silence or decides mid-mission that he’ll have a better shot from the building next door.

And Clint says, “Bullshit, I was there.”

Coulson just keeps on pointedly not looking at him, eyes fixed on the road like that’s where all the answers are, and says, “Orders from on high. I’d tell you if I could.”

Clint thinks that Coulson might actually be telling him the truth.

 

 

(In any case, Clint doesn’t press the issue. He’s a sniper, he knows how to wait. He’s been waiting his whole life.

He forgets the fifty bucks and finds new agents to sneak him booze. It’s almost the same.)

 

 

Natasha sneaks into SHIELD again, but instead of leaving an ominous letter, she brings herself, sitting on Clint’s too small, regulation bed, wearing a leather jacket, with cut on her face and dark circles under her eyes.

She says, “Hello, Clint,” like she didn’t fucking set him up, like she hadn’t been leading him around by his dick before that.

“Hey,” he says, “Natasha,” because he was born in Iowa and his mama taught him two things: when the old man’s drunk, you do your best to be invisible; and that when someone says _hello_ you say _hi_ back. They’re from the Midwest. They’re polite.

But his daddy was a drunk and the Swordsman was a con and Barney was jealous and cold and Natasha is potentially a Russian spy, and so Clint punches her, doesn’t hold back.

Clint only knows something’s wrong when Natasha lets him.

 

 

There’s a lot of things Clint wants to say to her: _where the hell have you been_ and _was it worth it?_ and _for a while there, I thought I loved you_ , but he doesn’t because Natasha only ever says exactly what she means to say, and Clint doesn’t think that his discovery of her betrayal will make her anymore honest. So instead he lets her pick herself up, lets her touch the tender skin of her cheek where the marks are just beginning to show, lets her look at him like she’s seeing him for the first time as Clint Barton the person and not as a tool, not a weapon to be used.

She presses on the forming bruise and says, “You showed Coulson my letter.”

And Clint tells her, “What can I say, I like a man in uniform.”

Natasha smiles, and Clint braces himself. The first time she’d smiled at him it was just before she’d killed a man. The last time, she’d abandoned him to SHIELD. Natasha smiles and her hair is the color of blood and there is a cut on her cheek and Clint can see the imprint of his knuckles forming bruises on her face, “Tell him that I’m not done. That I need more time.”

Clint wants to tell her to go fuck herself, but Natasha’s always been fast, and she’s tranqed him before he can bat an eye. She helps him onto his bed and leaves, and all Clint can think is, _love to see you leave and love to watch you go_. Not much has changed.

 

 

The tranquilizer leaves him feeling woozy, on the verge of nausea, and he thinks, as he tries to make his way from his small bed to his smaller bathroom, that this feels a lot like the bad nights after Barney and before Natasha. Clint runs his head under the sink and thinks that he’s not telling Coulson dick. That if Natasha is so good at breaking into government facilities that she can just go upstairs to where Coulson has his office—glass walled and nestled between all the other agents who are important enough to get their own space but not trusted enough to get walls no one can see through—and tell him herself.

Cold water drips down Clint’s neck as he decides that Natasha can go fuck herself. That he doesn’t like SHIELD enough to let them know about their apparent security inefficiencies.

 

 

SHIELD benches Clint for two months after the prisoner transfer incident and Clint can’t figure out if it’s because they think he’s to blame or because no one needs killing. Whatever. Clint’s fine with it. The down time gives him a chance to get to know the layout of SHIELD and its drop ceiling a little better.

He scares a baker's dozen of agents before some bald guy with a baby face and the ugliest pair of glasses he's seen outside of a truck stop tells him to knock it off.

“I’m training. It’s part of my skill set.” Clint tells him

Baby Face ignores him, “I’m Agent Sitwell. We need you ready in ten.”

It’s the first time anyone’s taken Clint out besides Coulson. He’s not particularly happy with it.

 

 

Sitwell is boring and writes Clint up for talking during enforced radio silence and refuses to tell him where Coulson is. And Clint thinks he can handle it. It’s one op, Sitwell will loosen up.

But as one mission bleeds into the next, Clint is tossed around the other Agents of SHIELD and his file fills with black marks. _Failure to conform to field protocol_ says Sitwell. _Insubordinate_ says Woo. _Uncooperative_ ; _failure to conform to mission strategy_ ; _disregard for personal safety_.

Really, all Clint wants is for someone to tell him where the hell Coulson is. The man eats hot dogs in designer suits and uses him for bait, but he lets Clint do his own damn thing and get the mission done. Clint supposes that he should be happy that SHIELD finally sees him as part of the team. Clint’s not that good of a person.

 

 

No one tells Clint where Coulson is, so Clint takes it into his own hands and breaks into Coulson’s files.

And then he breaks into Coulson’s apartment.

 

 

Coulson lives in Tribeca of all places. His apartment gets lots of light and is filled with dead houseplants. There are no family photos. There is no art on the walls. The couch looks old and worn and comfortable. The TV is filled with _Wife Swap_ and _Survivor_ and years old episodes of _Super Nanny_. Clint’s not sure if it’s a cover or not, and he has a strange stab of sympathy for Coulson, who apparently never comes home, and when he does, he drowns himself in bad reality TV and Chinese takeout, if a quick look at the fridge proves anything.

Clint’s not sure what he was expecting in Coulson’s apartment, but it wasn’t this. Coulson’s closet is filled with suits and Clint’s not sure the guy actually owns a pair of jeans. Clint wonders if the man spends his time between SHIELD and his DVR, and he thinks that Coulson needs fewer initials in his life.

Part of Clint’s new off-base freedom at SHIELD is the imposition of a curfew, which Clint’s not exactly happy with on principle but fine with in practice since he never leaves HQ anyways. He’s not really familiar with the city and entirely unwilling to let old enemies get the drop on him. Besides, Clint’s not really sure how a trained agent of SHIELD, how a man like Phil Coulson, would react to coming home and finding Clint there. He suspects it would end bloody. He suspects that he would lose that fight. So Clint leaves a note.

 

 

Coulson finds him in the cafeteria and it’s a lot like that first day he took Clint to Beirut. He’s wearing one of those fresh pressed suits Clint found in his closet and the Junior Agents are scattering in his wake.

“Let’s take a walk,” Coulson says, hands in his pockets, forced casual, tone bland.

Clint misses the Phil Coulson who thinks Clint can’t fire a gun, and, since Clint’s always been a bit of an asshole, he flutters his eyelashes and says, “I love it when you’re forceful,” but he follows Coulson anyways because he’s never given him a reason not to.

 

 

Coulson takes him to Bryant Park, buys them both hot dogs covered in sauerkraut, sits him on a bench and passes over the note Clint had left, _Honey, we’re out of milk_ written on yellow legal pad, “I could have you disappeared, you know.”

“Aw, but you’d miss me.” Clint says, because if Coulson had wanted Clint disappeared he would have done it already. That note is conviction enough and Coulson’s not really one for games.

Coulson takes a bite of his hot dog and does not rise to the bait, “I’m trying to protect you, Barton. You’re making it very difficult.”

Clint has long since given up trying to pry information out of Coulson, so he just says “You’re not doing such a bang up job of it, sir, what with your insistence on sauerkraut and all,” and hopes he provokes a response.

Coulson sighs and looks down at his hands, "What do you want, Barton?" And there's something no one's ever asked Clint before. Clint has spent a lot of time trusting the wrong people and doing a lot of the wrong things because they wanted him to. He hasn't really thought much about what he wants outside of sex and food, and given the state of his life in recent years, even those are negotiable.

So instead of answering the question he says, "Natasha paid me a visit two months back.”

Coulson actually looks at Clint at that, “Did she say anything?” and there goes Coulson again, never asking the questions Clint thinks he should be asking. Never surprised. Never giving anything away and Clint thinks that Coulson plays a very long game.

Clint can’t ask _what is going on here?_ because Coulson wouldn’t answer and Clint doesn’t really know if he means between him and Coulson, or him and Coulson and Natasha, or if that’s even the right question, so he just passes on the message. He leaves out the bit about being tranqed and not going down to med bay, because Coulson tends to take shit like proper medical care seriously, especially after an assault by a potentially duplicitous agent. And Coulson looks like the entire weight of the world has been put on his shoulders before he shrugs and the tension is gone and he looks just like he did that first day—pleasant and polite and entirely unassuming.

“They’re starting to trust you, Barton,” Coulson says, standing, “Stop antagonizing the other agents and do your job. It’s a good sign.”

And when Coulson leaves, Clint is left alone, rapidly cooling and entirely inedible hotdog in hand, wondering what the hell having the trust of something like SHIELD really means. When he trusted Barney and he trusted Natasha and all he ended up with was bruises and heartache.

 

 

Clint has been betrayed by a lot of people in his life. He’s been passed around between people who were supposed to love him, care for him, and, honestly, at this point, he’d be more surprised if someone chose to stay. If someone laid themselves bare to Clint like he’s done time and time before, only to end up cut up and laid out and so alone.

For all he’s bounced around, though, Clint’s never been alone. Fresh from one heartbreak and onto the next, convinced if he keeps going it will hurt less. Clint was always following after someone’s heels, first Barney and then Trick Shot and then Natasha, and every time Clint thought that it would be forever. Betrayal doesn’t make you any less hopeful that someday, someone would want to stay. It just makes you believe it less when it happens, sabotage opportunities when they come because you’re still that scared little boy inside.

For all Clint’s been a circus star and a potential villain and a sniper for SHIELD, he’s never really been his own man. He thinks he might like to try.

 

 

Clint starts to spends some time in the city, figures he might as well make use of the freedom he has, thinks that maybe if he gets out more then maybe he might be nicer to the SHIELD agents who are put in charge of him. But Clint doesn’t want to go to museums because he never really understood art and he never liked dwelling on the past, and he doesn’t want to go shopping, and you can only eat so many gyros before even he pukes.

He’d go to a bar, spend a night out. He’d like that, to drink and flirt and maybe, if he’s lucky, forget. But he still doesn’t like the idea of Natasha being able to get to him with his defenses down and he still has that fucking curfew like he’s a goddamn teenager. Besides, SHIELD likes to put him randomly through field exercises at the asscrack of dawn, and Clint can still work a bow and a gun with a hangover, he’s done it before, but he’d rather not if he has the choice.

So instead, Clint decides that he’s going to figure out how to break into SHIELD. If anyone asks, he’s just being prepared.

 

 

Clint spends days in the ceiling. Long afternoons and he just sits and listens and lets the sounds of efficiency and secrets waft over him. He finds the access points and the points of no return and starts to stash guns and arrows and MREs. Always silent, he learns how to sneak through metal air ducts and drop from ceilings with only a whisper of sound. He learns how to sit in the kitchen, silent and still and completely in the open but Woo still tells some new recruits about where to find the good coffee and Sitwell still calls his mom to talk about _Wheel of Fortune_ and no one says anything to him at all.

 

 

It’s not Coulson who finds him in the cafeteria this time but a woman, taller than average and prettier than most with fiercely intelligent blue eyes and the sort of unassuming demeanor Clint has come to distrust since being recruited by SHIELD.

“So you’re Phil Coulson’s sniper, huh?” She’s wearing one of those black catsuits some of the agents wear in the field and Clint’s not sure if that’s a logistical or sartorial choice at two o’clock on a Wednesday. He’s also not so sure that he’s Coulson’s sniper, not when he hasn’t seen the man in months.

“Sure,” Clint agrees, easy, jovial, completely false, “I could be yours though. He’s been playing hard to get, and I’m a simple girl.”

She ignores him with the ease of someone who has put up with a lot of bullshit, “I’m Maria Hill, and you’ve been tapped for a special project.”

 

 

They don’t tell him much, and by this point Clint’s used to it, comfortable in distrust, preferring silence to lies. They tell him that they want to expand his skill set, and Clint thinks about breaking into SHIELD’s files, into Phil Coulson’s apartment, thinks he spent more than a year with Natasha who taught him more than Trick Shot or the Swordsman could ever hope to, and thinks, _I’d like to see you try_.

But they put him in a ring and give him knives and chains and brass knuckles and opponents covered in Kevlar and scars with the hard eyes of men who have seen too much. They teach him about torture; about how it feels to go without sleep for days and be half-drowned in ice water. They give him the keys to helicopters and trucks and jets and teach him how to fly.

Clint comes away bloody and bruised, ridden hard and put away wet, and he feels _alive_. Natasha made him into a weapon, but SHIELD refines him, tempers him, sharpens his edges. Clint thinks that he doesn’t trust SHIELD, but he doesn’t have to.

For the first time in his life, Clint doesn’t need anything. He thinks, if he had to, he could do it all on his own.

 

 

Clint sprains his wrist sparring one day. It’s a stupid injury and he fights the trainers all the way down to med bay and then he fights the doctors all the way to the exam room. Coulson is waiting for him there, no worse for the wear, looking neutral and bland and Clint thinks, suddenly giving up the fight, _where the hell have you been?_

“Hill tells me that you’ve been enjoying your new assignment,” he says because _hello_ is for people who are not Phil Coulson.

“That’s a bit presumptuous,” Clint tells him, letting the nurse inspect and wrap his wrist, more interested in what Coulson wants than fending off over cautious doctors, “She never asked for my opinion, just likes to tell me that I can do better.”

Coulson looks at Clint and asks, completely innocently, “So you haven’t learned to shoot straight then?”

And Clint laughs because he’s missed this—missed Phil Coulson who is an asshole, and thinks Clint can’t fire a gun properly, and always gets him the best bows and the best jobs and bitches about him scaling trees with delicate equipment but never actually stops him, “I just can’t figure out where the arrows go in the guns, sir.”

And Coulson smiles, a small private thing that quirks up the sides of his mouth and shows no teeth but it’s _something_ , “In that case, how do you feel about Lithuania?”

 

 

It turns out, Clint has a lot of feelings about Lithuania, none of them favorable, mostly that it’s too damn cold and the beer tastes like piss. But mostly he’ll remember, in the end, that it’s just him and Coulson there and the safe house is small so they share a bedroom, each to his own cramped twin bed. They track gunrunners during the day through the winding streets of a dying town, and Coulson takes a man out with an impressive right hook, and orders them _pyragas_ with an unexpected mastery of the language. At night they fill out their SITREPs in front of the fire and Clint can settle into the silence like he hasn’t been able to do in years.

 

 

“Hill called me your sniper,” Clint says as they pack their things, gunrunners neutralized and weather cleared enough for them to make the drive to the airport. Coulson is working through a checklist, making sure nothing gets left behind, making sure they can’t be compromised, and Clint doesn’t know if it’s his own list or SHIELD’s but he appreciates it nonetheless.

“You are my sniper,” Coulson says without batting an eye, double checking that they’ve left no slips of paper behind in _Seksas lietuviškai: proza ir poezija_.

Something flares, dark and dangerous and unexpected, in Clint, “You’ve been MIA for the past six months, this vacation to the ass end of the USSR does not make you my keeper.” If someone is going to stake claim to Clint, then they should at least _be there_ because his dad was a shitty father and Barney was a shitty brother and the Swordsman was a shitty mentor, but at least they’d been there every step of the way when they’d been stringing Clint along.

Coulson sighs, ticks off the next thing on the list, sits on the armrest of the worn down sofa, “As far as SHIELD is concerned, I am. I was your original handler and I was the one who recommended you for black ops training, even though there’s still an alert on your file for association with a potentially treasonous agent. You turn rogue and it’s on me, Barton.”

“So you’re my talent scout?” Clint asks, uncomfortable with the idea of Coulson sticking his neck out for him, uncomfortable with the idea of Natasha betraying more than just him.

Coulson smiles, and it’s a tired thing, and Clint thinks back to that small grin in med bay three weeks ago wondering if that’s what Coulson actually looks like when he’s happy, “Romanoff is. She was supposed to be scouting you, assessing your potential, but then she went rogue and took you with her.”

“And you signed me up anyways.” Clint feels unsteady, uncertain. The circus taught him how to fall, but he’s a sniper at heart, and will always prefer a firm place to stand than the knowledge that when he hits the ground he’ll be able to do it all over again. This feels a lot like free falling, and Clint thinks that he knows all the ways that this can play out, that he knows enough Russian to make a break for it if he needs to, because the only thing Clint hates more than being betrayed is being used. And SHIELD is using him, has been since the first day, but Clint never thought that Coulson was anything else than ruthless in his honesty.

“You were on our radar already,” Coulson says, “and I don’t think that Romanoff’s gone off the deep end quite yet.”

“So you trust Natasha?” Clint’s asks because it needs to be asked. He thinks that he once thought he knew her, thinks that a part of him still loves her, but he doesn’t think he can ever trust her again.

Coulson looks Clint in the eyes, when he speaks his voice is level, “Not as much as I trust you.”

And Clint doesn’t really know what to do with that, so he doesn’t say anything at all.

 

 

After Lithuania, it’s a lot like the beginning. Coulson takes Clint across the country, across the globe, and lets him stretch that new skill set of his. And Coulson is in his ear and by his side and together they break into buildings and deliver encoded flash drives and arrest gunrunners and kill bad men.

Clint learns a lot. He learns how to administer field first aid, gives Coulson jagged stitches, rough against the fabric of his shirt, Coulson giving him instructions and fighting blood loss and not looking scared at all. And Clint learns that Coulson can’t speak a single Romance language, that he listens to jazz and bluegrass music and that, when Clint wakes up in the middle of the night from the nightmares he’s had every night since he was seven—the faces sometimes changing, the details growing more grotesque with age and too much knowledge—Coulson never looks at him any differently.

At night they sit together and fill out their reports and Coulson shows him as much of the mission file as he can, seeming to understand that Clint has spent a lot of time trying to fight the good fight, and a lot more time doing the opposite. Clint’s glad for the proof Coulson provides, glad that in this one thing he can have peace of mind.

 

 

Eventually things stop going smoothly. Eventually Clint can’t run and jump and fight his way out of this one and, finally, all that cold-water training, all that sleep deprivation and anti-interrogation training SHIELD gave him comes in handy.

It’s the same guys who jumped that prisoner transfer a year and a half ago, and Clint thinks that’s probably significant, and he thinks that they just need to chill out. So he thinks of his parents birthdays and Fibonacci sequences and is jealous of all those guys who have their name and serial number to recite because all Clint has is a lot of bad memories to deflect with.

“Where is Natalia Romanova?” They ask and Clint tells them his mother’s birthday, gets a boot to the face for his trouble.

Clint doesn’t mind it much, thinks that he was born for this, that his daddy was a mean drunk and that all Clint’s ever really been good at is being beaten. He hopes Coulson is doing okay though, because Clint doesn’t know if he was snatched too or not. Clint suspects that they didn’t put him through half the training they gave Coulson but he also thinks that there was a _Super Nanny_ marathon on last Saturday and the guy deserves a break once in awhile.

They ask Clint again, “Do you know where Natalia Romanova is?” and Clint is way past seeing double, thinks he’s onto seeing triple, thinks he sees someone with fire in their eyes and hair the color of blood and he’s glad that out of all his past demons to come visit him, it’s Natasha.

 

 

Clint wakes up slumped in the bed of a pickup and his head aches and one of his eyes is swollen shut and Natasha is looking down on him, real concern in her eyes, and all Clint can think is, _this is a first_.

“Be quiet,” she says, and Clint notices the tense lines of her body, they way she holds her head, as if she’s listening for something. Clint normally doesn’t take orders so well, but he hurts all over and he’s not sure how much blood he’s swallowed and his lips are cracked.

A moment passes and Natasha relaxes, sits next to Clint in the truck, keeps her head carefully in view, but turns her eyes away, “This was not what I intended to happen,” not an apology, but as close to one as Clint thinks Natasha can make, “Coulson should be here soon. Tell him I’m almost done.”

Clint tries to say, “Tell him your fucking self,” but his lungs burn and all that comes out is a strangled breath.

Natasha sighs and looks down at him again, assessing. She brushes something off his face and gently presses her lips to his forehead, whispers, “I’ll see you soon,” and then she’s gone. Clint mercifully passes out before he has time to be properly angry.

 

 

The next two weeks are a blur of doctors and gurneys and the good meds.

"We're going to need you to tell us what happened," Hill says when Clint can finally piss on his own again.

"I'm in the hospital," Clint tells her, "aren't you supposed to bring me flowers?"

"We found you unconscious outside of a destroyed HYDRA base," Hill carries on, ignoring him as usual, "So congratulations, Barton, you're probably not a double agent. We still need to know what happened though, so we can verify this.”

When Natasha had looked at Clint, broken and bloodied in the back of that pickup, she had looked genuinely concerned, and everyone who’s looked at Clint since has followed suit. Doctors and nurses and anonymous agents of SHIELD looking at Clint and only seeing his cracked ribs, his fractured cheekbone, how his body is just one big bruise. All their eyes say _I’m glad I’m not you_ and _I hope you’re okay_ and _I’m not surprised_.

When Hill looks at him, she looks him in the eye. Her eyes are bright and fierce and intelligent and she looks at Clint like he could be useful, like underneath the mouth and better than average aim there’s something there. It’s not exactly what Clint wants, but it at least it’s something, so he tells her everything. There’s not much to tell, but if she’s going to use him she might as well get the full story.

 

 

Clint gets discharged three days later. Coulson is there to escort him out. He looks like he always does—suit and sunglasses and loafers—but his arm is in sling and it looks like his nose has been broken.

“Looking good, Champ,” Coulson says, tone dry.

Clint grins, because Clint knows that Coulson didn’t have to be the one to pick his sad ass up from the hospital, that’s what junior agents are for. And Clint knows that Coulson actually means it—he’s seen the mission reports, he knows that Coulson broke his arm trying to stop Clint from being taken and probably broke his nose getting him back. And Clint smiles because he grew up in the fucking circus, and the show must go on and it’s always easier to pretend you’re fine than to bare your heart and wait for it to get hurt, “You should see the other guys.”

Coulson smiles back, and Clint knows him well enough by now to see the strain around the edges. He knows that Coulson puts on his sunglasses as they walk outside not because of the sun, but because he doesn’t want Clint to see that he’s just _so fucking relieved_ , and Clint lets him have the lie because the last time someone had cared about anything Clint did, his voice had only just begun to crack and he had a brother who still loved him.

 

 

Coulson doesn’t take him back to HQ, takes him to this little Greek place instead, where the hostess takes their orders in broken English.

“Just so you know,” Clint says, drinking his terrible diner coffee, glad that he can have any at all, “I don’t put out on a first date. I’m a good Midwestern boy.”

Coulson laughs, an odd huff of sound that makes his shoulders shake, “You’d know if this was a date, Barton. I do great first dates. This is an apology lunch.”

“For letting me get swiped?” Clint asks, incredulous, “Not your fault. Also, you got me out.”

“I didn’t get you out.” Coulson says pointedly, and Clint thinks that he really doesn’t give Coulson enough credit. Phil Coulson, underneath the suit and the carefully bland face and the pretty terrible sunglasses, knows exactly what he’s doing.

“Natasha said that she needs more time,” Clint says, waits for the waitress to drop off their souvlaki before going on, “Is there a reason she keeps using me to send you love notes? Or is this, like, your guys’ _thing_.”

Coulson looks thoughtful for a moment, “I was her handler originally, but she didn’t tell me anything before she defected,” Coulson chews a bite of food and shrugs, “If Natasha wanted to betray SHIELD, we’d all be dead already.”

“So I’ve been bait the entire time then?” Clint asks, mad for not seeing it sooner.

“Keep your friends close, keep your enemies closer, Barton,” Coulson tells him, “Plus, you’re a decent shot.”

And Coulson could be fucking with him, but at least he's on Clint's side.

 

 

Apparently near death experiences endear a person to SHIELD, and they start to put Clint on group ops. The teams are small, four or five guys, but it’s something, and, in a strange way it reminds Clint of the circus, back when he could think of the circus as home, everything insular and insane. They’re not friends, but they’re all they have, and Clint’s okay with that. Happy with that, even.

After a time Clint doesn’t quite forget about Natasha, but he stops remembering her. Stops trying to understand why she saved him, too many questions and the betrayal is fresh again. Even though Clint sort of likes his life now, Natasha shoved him into it without consent, without a lifeline, without even a fucking goodbye.

SHIELD still sometimes puts him on solo ops with Coulson, and Clint would never admit it, not even under pain of death, but he likes those best. Likes Coulson’s steady hands and surety and the way he falls back onto SHIELD regs when he doesn’t know what to do, but always trusts Clint to make the right call when it comes down to the wire. Clint trusts Coulson to get him the hell out of dodge, and Clint’s always been a loose cannon and a bit of an adrenaline junkie, but he’s a sniper and he likes knowing where he stands.

He always knows where he stands with Coulson.

 

 

Clint comes back to his quarters one day to find a man he does’t know already there. Tall with an eye patch and Clint can’t figure out if he should find that or the floor length leather coat more alarming.

“So you’re the sniper that everyone’s talking about?” the man says, rifling through the papers on Clint’s desk like he hasn’t a care in the world. And yeah, okay, the man has lost an eye. Clearly he has dealt with worse people than Clint.

Doesn’t mean Clint can’t be an asshole though, “You want an autograph or something?”

The man turns and looks at him, gaze level and assessing, “I’m Nick Fury, director of SHIELD. I thought it was about time we met.”

Clint has heard about this guy, hasn’t stopped hearing about this guy, but he always thought that people had to be bluffing, trying to one-up each other with Nick Fury stories and scare the new recruits. Clint can’t decide that if, in person, Fury is better or worse than the rumors. “You know,” Clint says, never one for self-preservation, “you didn’t really have to break into my room to do that.”

Fury smiles, something slow and dangerous, and Clint’s seen that smile before, seen it on Natasha’s face a thousand times, “Coulson wanted to get you, but I thought it best if I handled it. We found Romanoff.”

 

 

Clint sits on his bed, feels like a teenager being scolded, even though Fury is leaning back in Clint’s chair, feet casually kicked up. He looks bored and he looks dangerous and he looks like a man who doesn’t have time for games.

“We picked her up in Heidelberg last night. According to her, she’s been on our side all along, and if that smashed up HYDRA base we picked your sad ass up from is any indication, she’s probably telling the truth.”

“What do you want from me then?” Clint asks, only realizing he’s given too much away when Fury smiles.

“She’ll be put on probation, standardized psych evaluations and physical fitness, all that. Once we’ve sorted out this paperwork nightmare,” and Fury say this in such a way that Clint thinks he might be, despite the leather and the scars, at the end of the day, a paper pusher at heart, “We’re thinking of assigning her to be your partner. What do you say to that, Barton?”

Clint has a lot to say to that, _Fuck no_ and _You’ve got to be fucking kidding me_ and _Natasha doesn’t do group work_ are at the top of the list, but what he settles on is, “I don’t fucking trust her.”

And Fury grins like it’s Christmas, “That’s why you’ll be perfect. You’ll receive details as they become available,” Fury stands, a tower of black leather and gleeful menace, “Nice meeting you, Barton.”

 

 

Clint doesn’t sleep that night. Just breaks into the range and works until his fingers are raw.

The next night, when Clint sleeps he dreams of Natasha. He wakes up sweaty and scared and horny, despite himself. It’s no better.

 

 

Natasha finds him on the third night, sitting on Clint’s chair and looking as small and quiet as he’s ever seen her. Clint doesn’t say anything, just stands still, hand still on the doorknob, and tries to figure out if he needs to run.

“You look good,” she says, and she must be tired because Clint can hear the faint traces of her accent, “SHIELD suits you.”

“Yeah, don’t go patting yourself on the back for that one,” Clint tells her, “I’m still feeling a bit bitter.”

Natasha grimaces, “Fair enough.”

Clint looks at her and thinks she looks tired, looks remorseful. He thinks that he could have never taken her in a fair fight before SHIELD, that he probably still can’t, but at least now he’d have enough time to get away. He closes the door but doesn’t sit down. Clint and Natasha are many things, they have been many things to each other, but they are not friends.

“What do you want?” he asks, hands in front of him, posture relaxed, non-threatening. Natasha taught him that how the world sees you is not who you are. Clint shows her that he is unafraid, but inside he’s ready to run, like he’s always been ready to do.

Natasha falters a bit, but she settles on, “I meant to recruit you the proper way, but I ran out of time.”

“You used me,” Clint clarifies, not in the mood to pull punches.

“I used the resources I had to protect SHIELD,” her eyes flash, and there’s the Natasha Clint loved, “and you got to work for the good guys. At the end of the day, I’d say it worked out.”

And, yeah, it did work out, but, Clint thinks, that’s not the _point_ , “So that’s it? You give them some intel and all is forgiven?” he flexes his hands, feels his anger start to simmer inside.

“I don’t know, Clint,” Natasha says, raising to her feet, “Do you forgive me?”

Clint looks her in the eye and thinks that he doesn’t know this woman, never really has. He thinks that he wants to hate her, but out of all the people who have left him, she’s the only one who’s come back. Clint doesn’t really trust himself, so he just says, “Does it really matter what I think?” because Nick Fury said that he’s going to be Natasha’s partner and Clint knows that there’s no fighting that.

“No, it doesn’t,” Natasha tells him, toneless, “But I always thought it should.”

When she leaves, Clint doesn’t stop her.

 

 

Coulson finds Clint on the range three hours later. His muscles ache and the cuts on his fingers have reopened, even though he’s wearing his guards this time. Arrows scatter the floor from Clint hitting bullseye every time and the shafts refusing to split.

“Where the hell have you been?” Clint asks, sick and tired of Coulson’s disappearing act, the way he and Clint have something of a rapport going and then it’s radio silence for days and weeks and months at a time.

“Utah, on assignment,” Coulson says, voice easy, posture sure, “And then a couple of days of debriefings. They had some questions about my reports.”

“You mean how you sort of knew what Natasha was up to and didn’t tell anyone?” Clint asks, releasing another arrow. There is an ominous sound as it cracks through the other arrow, and Clint thinks, _finally_.

Coulson shrugs, “I told you,” and when Clint snorts at that, because that is fucking _rich_ , he adds, “I wasn’t that concerned, rooting for the underdog has worked for me so far. I was right about you, wasn’t I?”

Clint doesn’t say anything, just lets another arrow fly.

 

 

Somehow, this turns into a thing.

In the months Clint spent on black ops with Coulson, they got to know each other—watching shitty TV in motels and safe houses and eating increasingly questionable takeout and figuring out each other’s morning routines. But it always stopped in the sanctity of SHIELD HQ, Coulson sequestered away to whatever he does with his time, and Clint left to roam the halls and ceilings of SHIELD when he wasn’t being water boarded and whipped into shape by Hill. At most, they’d had lunch a handful of times; two people who knew each other eating at the same time. Clint made fun of Coulson’s love of sauerkraut. Coulson threatened to taser Clint. It was the closest thing to friendship Clint’s had in years.

But now, in the wake of Natasha, Clint finds himself at the shooting range at increasingly odd hours, reticent to see anyone who might know, might ask, might look at Clint with pity or fear. And Coulson is there, nine times out of ten, down to his shirtsleeves, arms rolled up, looking as worn out as Clint feels.

There’s been nothing but questions. Nothing but people wanting to know what he and Natasha were up to for that year, when Clint thought he was in love and Natasha let him believe a lie. It can only have been worse for Coulson, who carefully omitted information for years, trusting Natasha to make the right call. Coulson, who must have thought at one point or another that he’d made a mistake but that there was no way out but down. Clint thinks of the botched prisoner transfer and thinks that if Coulson had felt any doubt, he’d probably felt it then, betrayal evident in the deaths of twelve good agents. It’s been a long time to live with uncertainty, and Clint’s lived too hard and fast to really know what that’s like.

So they meet up at the odd hours of the day, Clint with his bow and Coulson with his gun, and they work on their aim, because it’s really the only thing they have that’s close to being in control.

 

 

Meeting up at the shooting range eventually turns into drinks. Coulson apparently keeps a fifth of bourbon in the bottom drawer of his desk, and Clint notes that Coulson’s been promoted sometime, his office now comprised of four solid walls and two small windows.

“Didn’t take you for a hard liquor kind of guy,” Clint muses, checking his sight lines out the windows from habit.

“Fury’s idea of a joke,” Coulson explains “It’s supposed to be for emergencies.”

“So I’m an emergency?” Clint jokes.

Coulson gives him one of those small smiles, eyes crinkling and mouth quirking at the corners, “I don’t mind,” and Clint sort of misses the Phil Coulson who was an unreadable asshole in a suit, because he doesn’t quite know what to do with this.

 

 

They drink on the roof in the quiet hours, not quite night and not quite morning.

“You’re not in trouble about Natasha, are you?” Clint asks. He and Coulson spend time together, sure, but they don’t really talk. Not about these things.

“Her intel’s proving good so far,” Coulson sighs, “but now I have two wildcards in my hand, and higher ups don’t really know if that’s good news or bad.”

“If they fire you, we could always start a band,” Clint tells him, “Coulson and the Wildcards.”

Coulson chuckles at that, “Not bad. Natasha could be the singer. What about you?”

“Oh, I played a few instruments, back in my circus days,” Clint muses, “Mostly guitar. A little tambourine. What about you, g-man? Handguns don’t count as a musical instrument.”

“Oh me?” Coulson says, “I can play a mean harmonica.”

And Clint laughs, can’t tell if Coulson is being serious or not, but it doesn’t matter. He hasn’t felt this good in years.

 

 

Fury calls a meeting in the morning.

Coulson and Natasha sit opposite from each other and Clint feels a bit like a dog who has to choose who he loves more. He picks Coulson, it’s not really a question.

“So far it looks like the three of you have been telling the truth,” Fury says, sounding stern and amused, “Agent Romanoff here’s passed every test we’ve thrown her way,” and Natasha smirks at that, “which means that it’s time for a test drive of SHIELDs newest little band of renegades. Agent Coulson, you’ll be supervising Agents Romanoff and Barton, and you two,” Fury’s eye flicks between Clint and Natasha, “will treat all intel as relevant and not go on a fucking wild goose chase for three years because you had a _hunch_ about a _mole_.”

Natasha looks away from Fury at that, cowed for now, and mutters her assent. Coulson makes a note on his legal pad, says “Yes, sir,” like he means it. Clint’s feeling a little smug and a little resentful, tangled up with Natasha and all her past mistakes no matter what, so when he says, “Sir, yes, sir,” it’s not with genuine enthusiasm, but it’s with something close.

 

 

SHIELD sends them to Heidelberg, to tie up loose ends.

Coulson says, “There’s nothing like a trial by fire, is there Barton?” slipping his sunglasses onto his face as they step out into the afternoon sun, and Clint grins, bears all his teeth, “No, sir. Just like the good ol’ days.”

Natasha hasn’t said a word to Clint since the day she came to his room, seems to understand his need for space. But now they’re in the field, and Clint doesn’t trust her. He’s not concerned about her running, he believes that she’s back for good now, but he remembers the year they had together before SHIELD. Natasha was a force to be reckoned with and Clint would have followed her to the ends of the earth, Clint _did_ follow her to the ends of the earth. And she let him, didn’t even bat an eye.

Coulson had told him, late night on the firing range the day before they shipped off, that Natasha cares for him, in her own way. That it showed in the reports she wrote before she completely fell off the map. Not that Clint can read them, “Above your security clearance,” Coulson had sighed without Clint even having to ask.

Clint doesn’t trust her, but he’s seen her snap a man’s neck with her thighs. He knows that she’s whip smart and whip fast and absolutely _lethal_. He also knows that, whatever else, Coulson will be there. For now, it will have to do.

 

 

Surprisingly, things do not go balls-up in Germany.

Clint remembers a lot of things about Natasha, mostly useless things like her how she slept on the left side of the bed and is allergic to peaches. He forgot, so focused on betrayal and trying to move on, however, how good they were as a team.

Apparently they still work well together. Natasha and Clint know each other, know their weakness and their strengths, and it’s just like falling in love all over again. A quick, heady rush, and when Coulson says, “Bring it in, Barton, Romanoff,” Clint laughs. He could get used to this.

 

 

In Heidelberg they get the last pieces of intel they need to shut down the mole in SHIELD, some agent Clint’s never worked with, but that’s not saying much. Fury seems happy with his new little band of renegades. From the ceiling, Clint overhears him one day saying, “Coulson and the Wildcards, it has a ring to it,” and Hill laughing, “Nick, you are a disturbed man.”

So Clint and Natasha and Coulson get sent out again, and again after that. Their success rate is the highest at SHIELD, something Clint can’t help feeling smug about. He hasn’t been this popular since he was a spotty teenager in the circus.

 

 

Despite the addition of Natasha, Clint and Coulson keep to their nighttime routines on away missions. They get dinner at wherever’s cheap and then it’s paperwork in front of reality TV. Clint hates the paperwork, _hates_ it, and thinks that Coulson doesn’t really like it anymore, but it’s easier when they do it together and, besides, it keeps them honest, something Clint appreciates.

Natasha leaves them to it, understands that it’s not really her place. In any case, Clint has seen her grab breakfast with Coulson, crossword puzzle between them and tension in their shoulders, and Clint knows that they have their own problems to sort out. At least they’re trying. Clint guesses he can too.

 

 

“I meant what I said before,” Natasha tells him one night, passing him in the halls of the barracks.

“Meant what?” Clint asks, because Natasha and him haven’t talked since the debrief on their last op a week ago.

She doesn’t smile, Natasha only smiles when she’s up to something, instead her eyes go soft and she tilts her head to the side, “You look good, Clint. You’re happy here.”

Clint shrugs because, yeah, she’s right, “You’re still not getting a thank you.”

Natasha laughs at that, and Clint thinks that she’s happy too, “I wouldn’t expect any less.”

 

 

It gets easier, this thing between Natasha and him. On missions they always work well together, trusting each other because they’re dead otherwise, familiarity trumping anything else.  At SHIELD, things were kind of unsteady at first. Recently, they both seem to be breathing easier, getting to know each other again. Coming to understand who Clint Barton and Natasha Romanoff are now, as people, without the lies and pretences.

Clint likes SHIELD Natasha more, if he’s going to be honest. Thinks she’s a thing of beauty, but he remembers that every rose has its thorns, and if Clint is going to insist on thinking in flower metaphors, then if Natasha is any flower, she’s an oleander—deadly.

 

 

Coulson finds Clint on the roof, feet dangling over the edge thinking about how to survive the fall if he had to. Coulson’s been away for a week, location undisclosed. They’ve started to put them on individual ops, give Clint and Natasha different handlers. Clint’s familiar with this song and dance, but he’s no more fond of it now as he was then. Not that it really matters, together the three of them are a force to be reckoned with, and SHIELD knows that.

“You and Agent Romanoff seem to be getting along better now,” Coulson says, bottle of bourbon in his hands. It’s not the original bottle they split, months ago, but some bottom shelf brand. Clint’s learned, for all Coulson’s designer suits, the man likes cheap food and even cheaper liquor.

Coulson’s right, of course. Clint and Natasha spar together and eat together and respect each other’s secrets. The other agents are scared of them, and Clint doesn’t really blame them. They’re both a little unhinged, Natasha and him. They both have shady past. So instead of mending bridges, he just laughs when Natasha pins him to the ground when they spar, agents watching from the corners, and says, “You holding back on me?” knowing that the she isn’t.

But things between them are still fragile, so he doesn’t answer, asks instead, “What’s with you and bourbon, anyways? Always thought you’d be more of a scotch man.”

Coulson sits next to Clint, lets his feet dangle over the edge, not a trace of fear on his face, “Would you believe I grew up in Kentucky?”

Clint’s seen Coulson’s file, and mostly it’s one big black hunk of _redacted_ and _security clearance not high enough_ , not that Clint’s clearance is that low these days, but Coulson’s is still higher and all of his personnel files along with it. But he thinks Coulson might be telling the truth, letting Clint into his life just that little bit more, so Clint says, “Only if you believe my first kiss was with a bearded lady.” Coulson looks at him, patient, eyebrows raised, so Clint goes on to explain, “Madame Eleni. She also swallowed swords.”

“You were a daring kid,” is all Coulson says, taking a swig at last.

Clint takes the bottle from Coulson, “You only live once, right?”

Coulson makes a soft noise of agreement but says nothing else. Together they sit in silence, passing the bottle between them, and Clint starts thinking less about how to survive the fall and more about how to get back up.

 

 

And then there’s Bolivia.

Clint thought he hated Lithuania and the cold, but now he thinks he might hate Bolivia more. For all its faults, Lithuania had Coulson as happy as he ever is, forcing Clint to listen to records of Ella Fitzgerald and The Stanley Brothers in the long winter nights. Clint can at least look back on Lithuania and smile.

Coulson nearly dies in Bolivia. It’s not really saying much, given their line of work, but Clint can’t help but think that this time it might be different, that this time when Coulson says, “Maintain position, Barton,” and, “If I’m not back in twelve hours, obey mission protocol. That is an order,” he actually means it.

Clint ignores the orders, like he always does, because they’re bullshit, and the last thing he heard on the comm before it shorted out was a soft, strangled cry of pain. Clint knows Coulson. He knows the difference between feigned distress and real. Clint kills five men getting to Coulson, doesn’t even bat an eye.

“My first kiss was Martin Shipman,” Coulson tells him, lips pale, eyes dim, and Clint thinks, _no, you bastard, not yet_ , “He couldn’t swallow swords though.”

Clint laughs at that, the sound wet and strangled to his own ears, as he strips away Coulson’s clothes, looking for injuries, “You can do better than some guy named Martin, sir.” Coulson’s bleeding out from his stomach, from the thigh, and Clint doesn’t know if Natasha and the others will get there in time. He knows that he has to try and keep Coulson conscious, wants to see him smile in any case, because Coulson doesn’t do that enough as it is, so Clint says, “Sword swallowing a non-essential skill anyways, Coulson. No one’s used one since the Middle Ages.”

“Not like bows though,” Coulson coughs, something sparking in his eyes, dark and distant and fading fast, but better than nothing.

“No, sir, not like bows.” Clint agrees. It will have to do.

 

 

SHIELD gets there just in time and Clint doesn’t know if he should be angry or relieved, so he just lets Natasha manhandle him into the helicopter and away from SHIELD EMTs and Coulson’s ragged breaths.

“He’s going to be fine,” Natasha tells him once they’re alone. She’s locked them in one of the single-use bathrooms and she’s gently cleaning the blood off Clint’s face, his hands. And Clint wants to believe that, he really fucking does, so he steadies his breath and lets Natasha clean up his face.

He spends the next week in the ICU by Coulson’s side.

 

 

(“Don’t you have a job to do?” Coulson asks when he wakes up.

Clint just shrugs, “In house holiday. My boss got shot.”

And Coulson gives him one of those small, private smiles and says, “Lucky you.”)

 

 

Hill comes by when Coulson’s sleeping, “Doctors say he’s looking good. I can authorize for him to be released into your care, if you want.”

Clint pauses at that, “My care?”

“Look, I don’t really have time for a chat about your feelings, Barton, but you spend all your free time with him, and most of the Junior Agents think that Romanoff’s your partner and Coulson’s your _partner_ ,” She shoves a clipboard into Clint’s hands, “Either way, I don’t really care. Just sign these, or don’t.”

She’s gone before Clint can really protest.

 

 

Coulson says, “You don’t have to,” when Clint tells him the plan and Clint just looks at him and says, “But I’m still going to. I hope to God you have more on your DVR than just _Super Nanny_ , sir.”

Coulson looks at him, face still a little pale but looking worlds better from when he nearly died in Clint’s arms. Clint used to think that Coulson was untouchable, unflappable. He still thinks Coulson is, most days, but now he knows that Coulson likes sauerkraut and bluegrass, well cut suits and woolen sweaters. Clint thinks that, underneath it all, Coulson’s only so untouchable because, at the end of the day, he’s lonely in the way Clint is. Surrounded by people who care, who you trust with your life, but no one he trusts with his heart or his secrets.

But Clint knows some of Coulson’s secrets, a side-effect of too small safe-houses and blossoming friendship, so he’s only a little surprised when Coulson says, “Well, then, you might as well call me Phil. I don’t need the neighbors thinking that I have some sort of fetish.”

 

 

Coulson’s DVR is full of _Super Nanny_ and his fridge is full of takeout and cheap beer, but Clint finds that he doesn’t really mind. Coulson mostly spends his day in bed or on the couch, sleeping and watching TV and checking his email on his laptop. Clint nearly burns down the place trying to make chicken noodle soup. It feels a lot like one of their away missions, but there’s heat and there’s cable and Coulson says things like, “If you burn down my apartment, Clint, I will have you disappeared.”

And Clint just bats his eyes and says, “But, Philip, I spent all day cooking this just for you.”

Coulson just raises his eyebrows and pulls up a form on his computer, something ominous and formal looking, so Clint turns on the kitchen fan and turns the flame down.

 

 

When Clint goes back to work, Natasha says, “You have fun at Camp Coulson?” and Hill says, “Stop fucking skipping out on your physical, Barton.” Fury says, “I’m tapping you for the Avengers Initiative. Look grateful.” And Sitwell says, “This doesn’t change anything, Barton.”

Clint tells them all to fuck off, except Fury who gets a ‘sir,’ which is pretty much the only way to tell the director of SHIELD to fuck off without getting fired.

Coulson just says, “I’m making pot roast,” and Clint smiles, says he’ll be there in time for _Survivor_.

 

 

It turns into just another thing, Clint crashing on Coulson’s couch, because it’s better than his box back at SHIELD and between the two of them they can cobble together something resembling dinner.

 

 

(Natasha gives him shit for it, but Clint doesn’t really care. He’s just glad that they’re at a place where they _can_ give each other shit for things. Anyways, he tells her that that catsuit makes her ass look fat, and Natasha’s mockery ends with Clint getting his face smashed into the carpet.

It’s totally worth it.)

 

 

There’s some excitement about Tony Stark and Iron Man for a while, and it ends in Coulson looking frustrated and Fury on a warpath. There are shut doors and meetings with the WSC. Clint’s only ever told that Fury’s pulling together a team, but he doesn’t know who else is on it, and Clint wonders what that will do to the dynamic of Clint-Natasha-Coulson, effective and tight knit as it is.

 

 

After Tony Stark, who even Clint thinks is a bit full of himself, there’s Thor. And after Thor there’s the Hulk and Captain America and Loki and it’s almost the end of the world. Fury calls them the Avengers and Banner calls them a time bomb and Steve and Tony are too busy eye-fucking each other to say anything at all.

At the end of the day, it’s still Clint and Coulson and Natasha, but Clint is achingly aware that this can change. That he’s a human on a team with demigods and super soldiers and that if he misses he could be the reason Captain Fucking America gets killed.  Besides, there are super villains now, not just HYDRA and their egos, and Clint is all too vulnerable, something he hasn’t been in years.

 

 

Coulson and Clint still drink on the roof sometimes, but now when they look down they can see the scars of a city that they almost couldn’t save.

“Don’t worry about them,” Coulson says, unprompted, “That’s the point of a team, you cover each other’s asses.”

“It’s been said that I have some issues with authority,” Clint says. It’s been said a lot by one shrink in particular who has been trying to get a book published about him using a false identity and nom de plume. Fury’s having none of it.

“But at the end of the day, I can always count on you.” Coulson tells him, open and honest in a way he usually isn’t when still in suit-mode.

Clint feels something rumbling in his chest, feels like there’s something he’s needed to say for years and if he doesn’t say it now he might never, “Out of everyone I’ve ever known, you’re the only person I really trust.”

Coulson gives him that small private smile that Clint thinks is just for him, “I don’t put up with you just because you have decent aim, you know.”

Clint laughs, head thrown back, and when Coulson kisses him, it feels like the most natural thing in the world.

 

 

Falling into bed with Coulson is unlike anything Clint’s ever done before. Clint trusts Coulson. He knows him like he hasn’t known anyone else before, has seen him in almost every state of being. They’ve been playing house for so long, and Clint wonders why they haven’t been doing _this_ all along.

Clint fucks Coulson into the sofa and wonders why all they were doing on it before was feeding into an unhealthy TV addiction. He must say it out loud, because Coulson laughs and says, “Shut up,” and “Harder,” and then Clint really isn’t thinking about anything at all.

 

 

Nothing really changes, not that Clint really thought anything would.

Coulson sleeps on the right side of the bed and presses thoughtless kisses to Clint’s jaw, Clint’s shoulder, in the morning as he waits for the coffee to brew. He vetoes all of Clint’s pet names and continues to eat sauerkraut likes it’s his lifeblood.

Natasha says, “About fucking time,” but she also says, “I call dibs on being Coulson’s best man. We used to sleep together, Clint, it would be weird,” so Clint knows everything’s going to be okay.

 

 

Looking back now, and Clint can see it’s been building for years, that he and Coulson were an inevitable conclusion. Natasha was hard and fast and dangerous, and the men and women before her were more of the same. But Coulson is steel and he knows all of Clint’s secrets and when he looks at him he sees Clint, exactly as he is.

Clint has loved a lot of the wrong people over the years, but he doesn’t think he’s ever loved anyone like he loves Phil Coulson. Coulson has never been anything but honest and loyal and a constant that Clint can’t ignore. Clint thinks that even if the Avengers go to shit, even if Loki comes back and burns the world to the ground, that at least he knows Coulson will be by his side, no questions asked. And really, that’s all Clint has ever wanted.

**Author's Note:**

> "Seksas lietuviškai: proza ir poezija" translates to "Sex, Lithuanian Style: Prose and Poetry" and is a real book you can buy, in English, if you ever find yourself wondering about Lithuanian erotica.
> 
> Title comes from the poem "Hurling Crowbirds at Mockingbars (Hope is Not a Course of Action)" by Buddy Wakefield.


End file.
